


to have a home

by ungoodpirate



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Foster Care, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24443407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: One April afternoon when the drizzle falling at a certain moment of twilight made the view outside the living room window look like magic, Persephone floated down the stairs and announced, “We should apply to be foster parents.”---aka, Adam becomes a foster kid in the Fox Way household as a preteen.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 146
Collections: TRC/ CDTH Prompt Week 2020





	to have a home

One April afternoon when the drizzle falling at a certain moment of twilight made the view outside the living room window look like magic, Persephone floated down the stairs and announced, “We should apply to be foster parents.” 

While she didn’t raise her voice above the volume of a pin drop -- although she never did -- it was clear to all this wasn’t a suggestion or whim. And as radical as it seemed that their ramshackle of unrelated parts that yet somehow was connected by some profound engineering would ever be state of Virginia approved, they all knew this was the future. It was just a future they had to make happen. 

Eight months later, a social worker ushered an eleven year old Henrietta boy through their front door and into their lives. His name was Adam Parrish. 

#

Everyone first assumed Maura would be the best with the boy. She had a daughter, after all, his exact age. She was in the current thrust of raising a preadolescent and should be in the know of what they’re learning in school. 

But Maura had raised her daughter to be independent and outspoken, even back towards her own mother. You didn’t name a child something like ‘Blue’ without the intention to give them the personality to back it up. Maura, with her staunch enacted belief to never tell a child what to do, wasn’t an ideal match for the boy who had come into the blue house on Fox Way with a bruise on his face and inability to look any of them in the eye. 

He additionally seemed to shrink under Jimi’s overwhelming affection and watch Calla like she was a predator and he prey whenever they occupied the same room. 

Persephone though. He seemed to be drawn to Persephone. And she was -- and Maura’s said this with the greatest admiration -- the bizarest of them all. 

Persephone didn’t speak down to children. She didn’t speak down to anyone, even if it would’ve been a favor to them. Rather, Persephone spoke from her own level of existence and it up to you whether or not you understood. 

#

“How was school, Adam?”

A quiet voice, spoken down in his lap, “It was alright, Ma’am.” 

They had given up trying to convince Adam to call any of them by their first names. They had an adults-only conference about it about a week and a half in where they decided to stop mentioning it. He had been told enough and after a while it just seemed like pressuring him. 

“He has to get used to us on his own timeline,” Calla had said, crotchety but astute. 

Back in the present, Maura aked, “What would you like for dinner?” 

Adam shrugged. Thus far he had eaten whatever was put in front of him -- no preferences or protests -- and nothing more. Luckily Jimi was the type of person to deliver seconds to people’s plates with asking. 

Maura turned away and tried to hide her sigh behind her teeth. She didn’t want the kid to think he was a burden, but this was a loud house stuffed full of lively people. If he didn’t learn to speak up, he was unlikely to get lost. 

When she turned back around, Persephone was sitting across from Adam like she had just appeared there. 

Persphephone smeared her deck around the table like a sloppy pile, like a child’s game of go fish, except all the cards were face up. “Pick a card,” she said, which could’ve sounded like a cheap magician, but her tone imbudded importance. It was clear it was a choice. 

At Adam’s hesitance, she added, “Just whichever you’re drawn to.”

He stared for a long while at the pile. Long enough that Maura was sure he wouldn’t end up picking a card at all. But then, a slow-moving hand reached out. From the mess of cards he pulled out the Six of Swords. 

Persephone held out a gentle hand. Adam passed it over. 

“This is the card of transitions.” She tapped the card with the crescent of her fingernail. “Moving away from what troubled you to what’s next. Transitions… changes… they’re scary and painful. But eventually… you know what?”

“What?” Adam asked on a hallowed sort of breath.

“You get to the other side.” Persephone handed the card back to him. “Keep it. Until you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“You’ll know.”

Maura knew she was witnessing something meaningful, but she still didn’t know what the kid wanted to eat. 

#

Blue managed the addition of a foster brother into their household with ease that made Maura a little proud. While she was Maura’s only, she was hardly the only child of the household. Additionally, that stiff independence she had instilled in the girl made it so she wasn’t so easily rocked but a new kid taking up time and space in her mother’s and pseudo-aunts' lives. 

Maura kept peaking at the two of them working on their math homework in silence at the coffee table in the living room as she toiled over an experimental tea blend for bloating and aurora clarity in the kitchen. They both had their heads down, scribbling over formulas Maura already didn’t remember learning. 

“Whatcha get for number three?” Blue asked. 

“Eighteen,” Adam answered. 

Blue swore in a way that preteens experimented with swearing when adults weren’t immediately around. 

Adam seemed to passively accept Blue into his life as he passively accepted everything else. He turned his paper around for Blue to examine his work. 

Maura took this moment to walk in and interrupt. “I’m going to be ordering Nino’s for dinner. Favorite toppings?”

She knew Blue’s current favorite was green peppers, but she hoped the openness of the question would cajole Adam into an honest answer. 

“Whatever’s fine,” he said. At least he stopped tacting ‘ma’am’ onto everything. Maura had been starting to feel ancient. 

When she retreated to the hallway phone, she overheard Blue say something so bluntly: “You know no one here is going to hit you, right?”

Maura sucked in a sharp breath. 

With more decisciness she had heard from Adam yet, he said, “I’m not stupid. I know all families aren’t --” He cut himself off very abruptly. Quieter, muttered, again: “I’m not stupid.” 

“If you were stupid I wouldn’t keep copying your math homework.” 

Dial tone hummed in Maura’s left ear.

In kind of a mutter, Adam said, “I just don’t know what the rules are here.” 

“Honestly, there’s not a lot of them,” Blue said. “But if you’re not sure you can ask me.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Okay? Awesome. Now seriously, how did you get eighteen?”

They weren’t thick as thieves after that, but they certainly thickened. 

#

As a trifecta, they found a rhythm. Calla handled the legal matters and haggling with the social worker. Maura handled the school stuff, food, and the other day-to-day that meshed along with Blue’s schedule, and Persephone handled Adam’s soul. Jimi filled in all the gaps with mother henning. And Blue -- friend, confidante, schoolmate, and self-appointed question answerer -- was the cherry on top. 

#

One evening, Adam visited Persephone in the study where she was working on her thesis. 

Even though he moved as quietly as a mouse, even in their creaky old house, Persephone didn’t even look up to say, “How can I help you, Adam?”

He held out the Six of Swords card. 

Persephone pulled the deck it belonged to out from the pocket of her oversized sweater. She nestled the Six of Swords neatly into the middle. Then she flipped the cards over and fanned them out. “Would you like to learn about the rest of them?”

Adam surveyed the cards for a long moment, nodded, then sat down. 

#

Maura swirled what turned out to be a pretty strong rum and coke in her glass. “Do you feel it too?” 

“About the boy?” Calla drained her glass. “Of course.” 

Persephone appeared in the doorway as if summoned. There was a ready and untouched rum and coke waiting for her at an empty seat. 

“Did you know from the beginning?” Maura asked Persephone. It was a stretch, because the future was vague and undefined, even to psychics such as themselves. But out of all of them, Persephone seemed to be some much more in touch with the bigger, greater, and deeper things. 

“I knew there was someone coming who needed our help.” Persephone sipped her drink. “He needed a home where people didn’t hurt him. He needed a home where he could be nurtured.”

“This is a good house for a psychic child,” Calla said. 

Persephone hummed. “It’s also just a good house for a child.” 


End file.
